Tipping Point
by thesilversun
Summary: McNair had lived a life of vengeance against the vampires who had ripped his old life from him, but seeing George and Nina, the wolf relegated to one night a month and their plans for family life, made him realise another way was possible. Maybe it was too late for him to change, but for Tom he'd try, even if it cost him his life. Set Being Human UK series 3. Episode tag.


**Title** Tipping Point.  
**Characters** Anthony McNair. (Mentions of other Being Human characters.)  
**Fandom** Being Human  
**Rating** PG  
**Word count** 1300  
**Contains** Non-graphic mentions of violence and brief mention of domestic violence (long past, not involving any of the characters)  
**A/N** This takes place during the episode Though the Heavens Fall in series 3. Although we know what happened to McNair in that, there is possibility that I might write a continuation of this with an AU of what happened. This is not part of my Being Human/Torchwood crossover fic 'verse

**Summary** He'd lived a life of vengeance against the vampires who had ripped his old life from him so many years ago, but seeing George and Nina, the wolf relegated to one night a month and their plans family life, made him realise another way was possible. Maybe it was too late for him to change, but for Tom he'd try, even if it cost him his life.

* * *

He saw them, George and Nina with their house, jobs and soon to grow family, the wolf safely relegated to a one night a month inconvenience and it hurt. He'd been a surveyor, albeit a very junior one, but he'd been on the way up. He had a life, a nice little flat, a car and friends he went to the pub with on a Friday night or to football. He'd been a young man making his way in the world. Then the vampires had taken him. Herrick and his murderous kind. Taking and ruining lives for their own twisted pleasures.

McNair shifted uncomfortably on the sofa, his leg aching. He could bear it - once you'd transformed a few times you knew what pain was. This was nothing. It had annoyed him that Tom had brought him here, back to where things had nearly fallen apart so shortly before. He couldn't stay angry at Tom for long though. He was good kid really. He was also the only good thing to come out of all of it the whole mess that had been his life since the night he was thrown in the cage to fight for his life. He'd probably never told him he was proud of him anywhere near enough or maybe at all. He couldn't have been more proud of him even if he had been his own flesh and blood. Tom was his son in every way that mattered.

Not that he was really a kid any more, Tom was near enough a man now. A few short months and he'd be twenty one. Nearly as old as he'd been when Herrick had torn his life apart. He wanted to put all the blame at the feet of the vampires and yes there was blame there, but harder to face was that what had happened after was down to him. Perhaps he could have faced it rationally – or at least as much as much as you could when finding out that nightmare creatures like vampires and werewolves and ghosts were real. He could have planned, made sure that he had somewhere secure to transform, not let violence beget violence. His mum had always been very clear on that, even when his dad had taken another swing at her.

McNair closed his eyes. He'd never thought ill of her for not standing up to him. She'd been a saint, like those carved and painted statues in the church where she'd taken him every Sunday until he'd gone away to college. He'd tried to teach Tom that women, all of them were to be treasured, that he should always be polite and respectful to them. He should never hit a woman, ever. Well unless it was a lady vampire, but even then you should just stake them and no messing about.

His leg gave an uncomfortable twinge of pain and he opened his eyes again and looked round the living room with all its clashing patterns and tropical beach mural. It had been one of the reasons he'd run. Scared of what he'd seen, of what he'd become, of what he might now be capable of and whether he'd be taken again and forced to fight again. Scared of whether he'd walk alive from the cage again knowing he'd taken the life of somebody who'd never dreamt such horrors were real or whether he'd die, a knife in his chest, leaving behind some man or woman clawed and bleeding, the cycle of destruction primed to start again.

He'd run out of his life never to return, stolen food, but mostly drink and drank himself to the point where he could almost believe vampires and werewolves to be a delusion of his alcohol soaked mind. Then had come that fateful night in Cornwall. Not that he remembered it, if there was anything to be thankful for out of the whole mess, it was that. And afterwards, the man and woman dead and...well chewed didn't really cover the horror of it. If Tom hadn't been there, tiny, helpless, scratched and bleeding. He would have ended it. There had been a quarry nearby, he could just have stepped off the edge. Tom had given him a reason to survive, and now he told himself, he was going to give Tom a chance to live.

There was a catalogue open on the coffee table, prams and buggies some with question marks against them, and McNair looked at it with a weary smile. George and Nina, who would have a baby in a few short months, would take Tom in, they were the sort. Tom would get to see a real family and see that a different life was possible. A few more years after that and maybe Tom would find a nice girl who didn't mine the wolf or maybe she'll be a wolf too like Nina. He could end up being a grandfather. McNair shook his head. Now there was a scary thought.

He couldn't let another generation live the life he and Tom had done for the past twenty years, hiding, fighting, killing, everyday a struggle to survive. It had to stop. If George and Nina could do it, he told himself, then so could he. For Tom he could do it. But what if George and Nina's child were a werewolf too? It had been hard enough with Tom who'd been barely toddling to manage those first changes. What if she went into labour during the full moon? He sighed and got up and went over to the little table by the mural and sat down.

He couldn't do anything to help with that. There wasn't much he was good for any more apart from killing. Now there was chance for it all to stop one way or another. Herrick had to die and then he could call it over then. It wouldn't be really, but he had to draw a line somewhere, to have a point where enough was enough. Maybe then Tom and him could stay in one place, get jobs, a house.

McNair shook his head. Weren't people when they reached middle age supposed to want to do something wild, buy a sports car or something? He just wanted a roof over his head, a bed and not to have to worry about where the next meal was coming from. Twenty years of changes, injuries and sleeping rough, had meant the aches and pains that once he'd shrugged off where getting harder to ignore. Maybe one day he wouldn't be quick enough with a stake or he'd slip and fall while taking something to sell as scrap. Maybe a vampire would decide that he was too dangerous to live and just kill him with no warning, or maybe he'd get sick and die coughing his lungs up in the back of the van. However it finally happened, as one day it surely would, he didn't want Tom to have to face it alone. He was a good kid, resourceful and a probably now a better fighter than he was himself, but he could be so naïve sometimes, so trusting that he dreaded to think of the sort of people who might take advantage of that.

He flexed his shoulders, feeling the first stirrings of the change approaching. Whatever happened tonight, George and Nina and Annie would see to it that Tom stayed safe. And Mitchell, well who knew, but Nina seemed to have his measure.

He picked up a pen. It felt strange in his hand. Apart from scrawling a deliberately illegible signature while selling their stolen scrap, it had been a long time since he'd sat down to write. He looked up at the clock. Just a couple more hours to moon rise and then, one way or another, it would be over.


End file.
